A probate valuer works a dead stranger's house while the coroner works the death — and the objects never quite agree with the verdict.
A Probate Mystery · read in order
Start free with Book One“The inquest records how they died. The probate file records what they owned. They never agree.”
A house packed for a journey no one ever took, and one room cleared before Nell arrived. The free first inquest.
“An unclaimed body. A name the courts erased eleven years ago.”
A body brought into the district from outside it, and an object on its inventory that belongs to another estate entirely.
“The estate goes to auction before the inquest closes — and a lot appears that was never in the house.”
A six-figure painting listed under a dead woman's name, in a house Nell cleared and certified held no such thing.
“The court left the door open — and sixteen years later, someone came who could read what walked out.”
A workshop sealed for sixteen years, a lantern that surfaced still lit, and a son who has never once opened the door he guards.
“The house was furnished for two — and every record the county kept swears there was only one.”
Two of everything in a dead woman's house, one set years-stale, and a small annuity still paid to a name that appears on no register at all.
“Two records are written when someone dies — and this one has lied for forty years.”
The finale — a lady of the town who was two women under one name, a grave in the good ground wrongly named, and the last inquest Nell Bardsley will read.
When someone dies, two official records get written. Nell Bardsley is the only person who reads both.
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